Final Word from Thursday, February 25, 2021

When a manufacturer seeks approval for a covid vaccine, it must prove to the regulators that the product is safe and effective. Drug companies are then able to declare with a high level of authority that their products are effective to a certain degree. Yet when doubts later arise about the effectiveness of a vaccine on a new mutation of the coronavirus, the opposite argumentation is used. Manufacturers and governments tend to say that there is no proof that a given product is not effective. Epidemiologist Petr Smejkal acknowledged this approach yesterday on Czech TV but went against it. "Unfortunately, the biggest problem with the South African mutation is that certain vaccines aren't so effective against it, specifically the AstraZeneca vaccine," he said. "But here I go making bad promo for it, which I don't want to do. But it is simply a fact." As the Czech government's new "face of the pandemic," Smejkal is moving us out of the vaccine-reverence phase into the vaccine-reality phase. [ Czech Republic covid-19 vaccination inoculation Television MeSES ]